"Way Down in the Hole": Systemic Urban Inequality and The Wire

The Wire is set in a modern American city shaped by economic restructuring and fundamental demographic change that led to widespread job loss and the depopulation of inner-city neighborhoods. While the series can be viewed as an account of the systemic failure of political, economic, and social institutions in Baltimore in particular, the fundamental principles depicted in The Wire certainly parallel changing conditions in other cities, especially older industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest. Indeed, it is for this reason that The Wire captures the attention of social scientists concerned with a comprehensive understanding of urban inequality, poverty, and race in American cities

Study of efficacy and adverse effect of fluticasone and formoterol combination in bronchial asthma

Background: Bronchial asthma is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the airways associated with airway hyperresponsiveness that leads to recurrent episodes of wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness and coughing particularly at night or in the early morning.Methods: This study has recruited 25 newly (male/female) cases of Bronchial Asthma diagnosed on the basis of spirometry in the Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Era’s Lucknow Medical College & Hospital (ELMC&H). Patients were received Fluticasone/Formoterol (200/10 μg OD). The drugs were administered through metered-dose inhaler (MDI).Results: The mean forced expiratory volume recorded before treatment 54.92±4.47 in a group who were treated with formoterol/fluticasone combination changed to 75.48±5.03 after the treatment. No significant adverse effect of this regimens was observed.Conclusions: The results of this study revealed this regimen showed a significant improvement in lung functions without any significant adverse event

The Role of Theory in Ethnographic Research

Scholars, including urban poverty researchers, have not seriously debated the important issues that Loïc Wacquant raised in his controversial review of books by Elijah Anderson, Mitchell Duneier, and Katherine Newman concerning the disconnect between theory and ethnographic research. Despite the tone of Wacquant’s review, we feel that he made a contribution in raising important issues about the role of theory in ethnography. The responses to his review that address this issue, especially those by Anderson and Duneier, are also important because they help to broaden our understanding of how theory is used in ethnographic research. What we take from this exchange is that good ethnography is theory driven, and is likely to be much more reflective of inductive theoretical insights than those that are purely deductive. Moreover, we show that in some ethnographic studies the theoretical insights are neither strictly deductive nor inductive, but represent a combination of both

The Welfare Functions of Credit and Debt in an Era of Rising Inequality

Low-income families have increasingly relied on debt as income inequality has grown and state policy has become less redistributive since the 1970s. This study examines the shift toward debt by linking the macro-level patterns in inequality, social policy and family debt to the micro-level analysis of family finances. Using several data sources on family finances--the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the Survey of Consumer Finances, and the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I analyze the tradeoff between social assistance and debt at the household level and the dynamics of family debt trajectories over time. Findings suggest that there is a general tradeoff between social assistance income and household debt. The reliance on debt in place of greater redistribution or social assistance is the result of a convergence of factors and explicit policy decisions that have promoted credit to improve the conditions of those who have been excluded from broader economic prosperity. The analysis of debt trajectories shows that debt has grown significantly faster for black families than white families. Social assistance, like welfare and the EITC, has become less effective in protecting low-income families from relying on debt. Taken together, this research suggests that growing debt places low-income families in increasingly precarious conditions in the long term, rather than the stability traditionally offered by the welfare state

A vinculin tail hotspot mutation in cancer patients affects mouse embryonic fibroblast motility

Vinculin, an essential adhesion scaffolding protein, physically links membrane bound integrin and cadherin receptors to filamentous actin. Cells that fail to express vinculin or possess dysfunctional vinculin exhibit rounded morphology, enhanced motility, and resistance to apoptosis and anoikis. Therefore, vinculin is classified as a tumor suppressor protein in which mutations have serious consequences in cancer. A possible ‘hotspot’ region—an encoded region of a protein that is highly inclined to mutate and phenotypically manifest—has been identified at in the tail-domain of vinculin at residue R925. At this residue, a specific histidine mutation has been linked to several types of cancer. The purpose of this study was to examine the possibility of residue R925 as a hotspot region and test whether the R925H mutation in vinculin enhances motility properties in a model cell line. To examine the status of R925 as a hotspot region, we mined several databases to link certain prevalent mutations in vinculin to different types of cancer. R925H was the most prominent mutation in vinculin that was present in 5 types of cancer, confirming R925 as a hotspot region. In order to assess whether R925H affected the motility of mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs), actin binding and bundling activity of mutant vinculin was compared to that of wild-type vinculin. We found that R925H mutant vinculin had lower actin bundling ability. To evaluate the changes in motility patterns caused by the introduction of R925H, we conducted random motility assays to measure the two-dimensional migration of MEFs on micro-fabricated and microfluidic devices. Mutant MEFs on hydrogels displayed significant differences in motility compared to wild-type cells—particularly in total accumulated distance, persistence and velocity. However, further investigation is required to interpret these findings. The insight on the effects of the R925H mutation on cell motility will serve as one of the first steps to unravel the complexities of vinculin’s potential role in several human cancer settings.Bachelor of Scienc

Social interaction as depicted by white and Negro authors: a sociological analysis of six novls

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1963 C43Master of Scienc

Comprehensive Summary of Performance-Affecting Factors of CCDS

This paper considers four factors affecting the functioning of a surface channel CCD. The factors considered are: the interface states, feed forward due to barrier modulation, surface potential fluctuations, and the avalanche multiplication in a CCD. A computer program has also been developed to analyze the performance of a CCD

Impacted Canine: Diagnosis and Prevention

Since impacted canines are encountered often, with an incidence rate of 1 to 2% in the general population, it is important for a dentist to identify the signs and symptoms of this condition and follow interceptive treatment or orthodontic treatment. Features of buccal or palatal canine impaction show lack of canine bulges in the buccal sulcus and asymmetry in dental midlines. Diagnosis of impacted canines at an early age of 8 to 10 years can reduce further complications, such as surgical exposure or root resorption of the lateral incisors, and will reduce the total duration of the treatment. The interceptive orthodontic treatment procedure with extraction of the primary maxillary cuspids can prevent impaction of the permanent maxillary cuspids and additional sequelae

Model-based motion estimation for synthetic animations

One approach to performing motion estimation on syn-thetic animations is to treat them as video sequences and use standard image-based motion estimation meth-ods. Alternatively, we can take advantage of informa-tion used in rendering the animation to guide the motion estimation algorithm. This information includes the 3D movements of the objects in the scene and the projec-tion transformations from 3D world space into screen space. In this paper we examine how to use this high level object motion information to perform fast, accu-rate block-based motion estimation for synthetic anima-tions. The optical ow eld is a 2D vector eld describ-ing the translational motion of each pixel from frame to frame. Our motion estimation algorithm rst com-putes the optical ow eld, based on the object motion information. We then combine the per-pixel motion in-formation for a block of pixels to create a single 2D projective matrix that best encodes the motion of all the pixels in the block. The entries of the 2D matrix are determined using a least squares formulation. Our algo-rithms are more accurate and much faster in algorithmic complexity than many image-based motion estimation algorithms.

Integrated analysis of circulating cell free nucleic acids for cancer genotyping and immune phenotyping of tumor microenvironment

The circulating cell-free nucleic acids (ccfNAs) consist of a heterogenous cocktail of both single (ssNA) and double-stranded (dsNA) nucleic acids. These ccfNAs are secreted into the blood circulation by both healthy and malignant cells via various mechanisms including apoptosis, necrosis, and active secretion. The major source of ccfNAs are the cells of hematopoietic system under healthy conditions. These ccfNAs include fragmented circulating cell free DNA (ccfDNA), coding or messenger RNA (mRNA), long non-coding RNA (lncRNA), microRNA (miRNA), and mitochondrial DNA/RNA (mtDNA and mtRNA), that serve as prospective biomarkers in assessment of various clinical conditions. For, e.g., free fetal DNA and RNA migrate into the maternal plasma, whereas circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) has clinical relevance in diagnostic, prognostic, therapeutic targeting, and disease progression monitoring to improve precision medicine in cancer. The epigenetic modifications of ccfDNA as well as circulating cell-free RNA (ccfRNA) such as miRNA and lncRNA show disease-related variations and hold potential as epigenetic biomarkers. The messenger RNA present in the circulation or the circulating cell free mRNA (ccf-mRNA) and long non-coding RNA (ccf-lncRNA) have gradually become substantial in liquid biopsy by acting as effective biomarkers to assess various aspects of disease diagnosis and prognosis. Conversely, the simultaneous characterization of coding and non-coding RNAs in human biofluids still poses a significant hurdle. Moreover, a comprehensive assessment of ccfRNA that may reflect the tumor microenvironment is being explored. In this review, we focus on the novel approaches for exploring ccfDNA and ccfRNAs, specifically ccf-mRNA as biomarkers in clinical diagnosis and prognosis of cancer. Integrating the detection of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) for cancer genotyping in conjunction with ccfRNA both quantitatively and qualitatively, may potentially hold immense promise towards precision medicine. The current challenges and future directions in deciphering the complexity of cancer networks based on the dynamic state of ccfNAs will be discussed